Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

China still leads the world in emissions, with no end in sight

People write about China’s growth so much it’s daunting to wring out
something new. But — wow — when you see it for the first time in a few
years, it still delivers one hell of a punch.

I lived in China for a year before the Beijing’s 2008 Olympics (a
kind of development event horizon in China’s history, towards which the
whole country hurtled), and I’ve been back regularly enough to marvel at
changes firsthand.

But I have never before been as dumbfounded as during a train ride
this week from Beijing through a swathe of China’s northeast coal
belt. My colleague Jaeah Lee and I were whisked away from the capital on
rails that carry sleek new bullet trains (in just two years, China will
have completed 11,200 miles of high-speed railway lines, leaving the U.S. limping). We zoom at 186 miles per hour through unabated upheaval.

The scene could be a panel from a graphic novel. For hours, not a
single bird stirred around the hundreds of empty skyscrapers that hang
lifeless over farms; they will house the newly urbanized from China’s
rural areas. Every bit of the shadowy landscape in China’s northeast has
been pressed into the service of an all-pervasive industry: power
generation. China continues to be the biggest emitter of greenhouse
gases, according to the World Resources Institute.
It’s clear to me how: Where one coal power plant stops, another begins.
A thick brown air blows and for a moment the trees look like nature’s
very own protesters, shaking their fists at the sky (the human variety
are strictly banned — though public outrage finally forced the government to publish air quality data in 2012).

“I feel weak and powerless,” a young filmmaker surnamed Yang told me
later in a Xi’an cafe when I asked him about climate change and
pollution. “I’ve seen so many pioneering and brave people dare to stand
up, only to be punished.”

This year’s tipping-point event for the public debate, dubbed by expats as “airpocolypse,” covered 2.7 million square kilometers (over
1 millions square miles) of the country with a pall of smog and
impacted more than 600 million people. We pass through Zhengzhou, ranked
among the four worst cities in China for air pollution; the city consistently registers levels well over China’s official scale for what’s called PM2.5 – dangerous
tiny particles from coal-burning and industry. In the first half of
this year, China’s levels of these particles were three-times worse than
levels advised by the World Health Organization. It’s this kind of air
pollution that contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in
China in 2010, researchers say. My Beijing friends will call me a wimp,
but I’ve developed a persistent cough these last few days. It’s hard to
breathe.

“I think the air quality is awful all around the country,” a Chinese
man surnamed Liang tells me (like the filmmaker, he didn’t want to give
his full name). ”For average citizens, there are not many things we can
do about it … We are not yet a democracy. Average people can only try to
live their own lives.”

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released Friday, greenhouse gas levels are now higher than at any point in “at least the last 800,000″ years. With a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions now
coming from China, the world’s most populous country will have an
outsized influence on the future of climate change. That didn’t go
unnoticed at the IPCC release in Stockholm, Friday. “If China can mind
its business well, it will be a great contribution to the world,” said
report co-chair Dahe Qin, speaking in Chinese in response to a question
from a Chinese reporter, according to a translator.

There are some encouraging signs of change. The new government under
Xi Jinping is finally taking seriously the threat of coal to China’s
air: It’s simply untenable for any government, let alone one that
depends so fundamentally on suppressing unrest, to ignore. This month,
Beijing committed to progressively shut down its coal plants inside the
city within four years,according to official plans that
also reduce burning in China’s coal-producing provinces. Presidents
Obama and Xi Jinping have agreed to curb the use of hydrofluorocarbons,
which are used in refrigerants, in a move that could lead to a
strengthening of the Montreal Protocol as an international climate
agreement. And China has sunk millions into solar development, as you
can see in the graph below, outpacing the U.S. dollar-for-dollar in
renewable energy investment, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission — which looks after
big-picture planning — announced earlier this year that renewable
energy investments in the country could total $294 billion in
the five years ending in 2015. This includes the incredible growth of
22 percent from 2011 to 2012. A closer look at the data shows the U.S.
has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to compete with the world’s
biggest clean energy player.James West/Climate Desk
But it’s hard to have confidence staring out the window of this
railroad car. The difference between inside our modern train and the
turbulent outside world couldn’t be greater. Inside is quiet,
air-conditioned and pleasurably fast. Outside, the environmental crisis
continues to unfold before our eyes. It’s a sense of powerless shared by
Chinese people we speak to.

“Under an ironfisted and strong government, what we normal people can
do to change the country is very limited,” said Yang, the filmmaker.
“That’s why I feel sad and disappointed.”